Repointing modern brickwork in Crossways

One elevation, not four. Plenty of houses here are only forty or fifty years old and already want pointing on one face, which surprises people. It is entirely normal. The elevation that takes the driven rain is worn out while the sheltered walls are barely touched, and repointing the lot would be spending money on three walls that do not need it. We rake back to sound mortar on the face that needs it, to a depth of about twice the joint width, by hand rather than with an angle grinder that would widen it permanently. The joints are damped down before filling and brushed back once the mix has taken up, and struck to whatever the house already carries, which on this stock is nearly always bucket handle or weather struck rather than flush or recessed.

The gauge, which is the part that gets guessed. Sand and cement is not one mortar. A mix with lime in it as well as cement behaves quite differently from a cement only mix, and the proportions used in the fifties are not the ones used in the eighties. Matching the colour is the easy half. Matching the strength decides whether the repair lasts, because a joint stronger than the brick stops being the sacrificial part of the wall and pushes the wear into the brick faces instead. We match the gauge to what came out and write the proportions into the quote.

How a cavity wall fails, which is not how an old wall fails. On a solid wall the mortar washes out and the wall gets wet through. On a modern cavity skin the joint erodes back at the arris, a shallow ledge forms where water can stand instead of running off, and the frost lifts the surface off in flakes. The perpends, the vertical joints, go before the bed joints because they were filled last and often filled thin, and a fired brick that has stood in a wet joint for a winter loses its face rather than its edges. Left long enough, that spalling turns into penetrating damp on the inside of the wall. That is why a wall here can look sound from ten feet away and be open when you get up to it, and it is why the diagnosis has to be done at arm's length rather than from the pavement.

Spalled brick faces. Where the face of a brick has already blown, we cut the brick out whole and turn it or replace it rather than filling the hollow with mortar. A mortar patch never matches and drops out within a few winters. Matching a facing brick from the seventies or eighties often means reclaimed stock, so we hold a sample against the wall and show you what we have found before anything is laid, judged on how it will look once it has a few years of weathering on it.

Garden walls, piers and copings. Estate plots here are divided by long low walls with piers at the drive, and those are the first mortar on a property to go. They stand in the open with weather on both sides, most were built without a damp proof course so they draw water up out of the ground, and once the coping loses its bedding and the units go loose the top of the wall fills with water and the frost opens it out. Repointing the coping and the top courses early is quick work. Left too long and the joints stop being the problem.

Movement joints and stacks. Long runs of modern brickwork carry vertical movement joints, filled with a compressible strip and sealed. Those are not mortar joints and must never be pointed solid, and we have seen plenty that have been. A stack, where the house has one, takes weather on four sides with nothing warming it, so it wants repointing above the flashing and the flaunching renewed.

The older edges of the village. A small share of property around the edges predates all of this and is solid wall rather than cavity, with no gap behind the brick and nothing to stop water crossing it except thickness and evaporation. Those want a breathable NHL lime mortar and a hand raked joint, the same as any period wall of that age, and they are the exception here rather than the rule. We will tell you clearly which of the two you own, because the two want opposite things.

No rate per square metre: the area tells you almost nothing until somebody has looked at what the joints are like.

Getting to it. A detached house on an open estate frontage, a terrace with a shared rear path and a bungalow you can reach off a tower are three different set ups before a joint is opened. The work at height rules are why the scaffold is a priced line rather than something absorbed into a rate.

The joints decide it, not the wall. How deep the joints have to come back, and whether the faces have already spalled, sets the hours far more than the area does.

Matching is the part that shows. Too strong a mix is the classic mistake, and one hard frost takes the face off soft brick. Lime is right on most pre-1919 walls here.

Comparing quotes? Ask how deep the joints are raked and by hand or by disc, what the mix is and whether it has been matched, and whether the scaffold is in the price. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.

Almost everything in Crossways went up in the twentieth century, and the housing keeps building right through it, with the busiest stretch in the nineteen seventies and early eighties. That matters because mortar practice changed a great deal across those decades. Earlier post-war brickwork was commonly laid in a mix with lime in it as well as cement, which is more forgiving and fails gently. Later work moved towards harder cement only mixes, and harder again once masonry cement became normal. Put a nineteen eighties mortar into a nineteen fifties wall and the joint will outlive the brick, which sounds like a good thing and is not: the wall then wears out through the brick faces instead of through the joints, and brick faces cannot be renewed the way a joint can.

So on a village like this one the useful question is not what colour the mortar is. It is what the house was built in and what strength is going back. Find out roughly when your house went up, ask whoever is quoting to name the proportions rather than write sand and cement, and be careful of anyone who offers you lime pointing here on the grounds that it is better. It is better on a solid wall built to breathe. On a cavity skin in this exposure it is simply too weak, and it will be washing back out of the joints inside a few years. The mix is chosen for the wall in front of you, not for a principle.

We cover Crossways, Woodsford, Warmwell, Moreton and the DT2 villages out towards Dorchester and Wool, under Dorset Council. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.